Mars Landing Party and Planetary Science Symposium

Be advised, your RSVP here does not guarantee you a seat at this event.

The Mars Science Laboratory better know as the Curiosity Rover is scheduled to touchdown on the Red Planet early on the morning Monday, August 6 and you are invited join our celebration beginning Sunday evening.

We will be providing a variety of snacks and refreshments, while supplies last, of course. Please feel free to attend whatever parts of the program appeal to you.

The most up-to-date information can be found at Mars Landing Party, a website created especially for this event.

6:30pm Doors to the Hodges Room open.

7:00pm Speaker program begins. Five presentations are slated, each lasting about 45 minutes with a brief question-and-answer session.

In the Beginning: The origin of life on Earth and elsewhere

The future of outer solar system exploration lies with JUICE (JUpiter ICy-moon Explorer)

The Moon and Mercury: Water, water everywhere?

Mars exploration from the 17th century through tonight

The Mars Curiosity Rover - Assessing the conditions for life on the Red Planet

Midnight We cut over to live NASA/JPL coverage of the descent and landing and go into full-fledged party mode.

1:30am Earliest reports of the MSL landing arrive at JPL.

3:00am We close up shop and head home to go to bed.

Because of the day of week and time of day for the party, there should be some parking spaces available on Fifth Street. In addition, there is a parking deck adjacent to the Centergy Building which is accessed from Spring Street. It is open 24 hours may be unattended so be sure to have a credit card handy when you exit. Hourly rates can be found here. The maximum rate - 5 hours or longer - is $12.00. Party-goers are encouraged to carpool.

Marc had it all arranged! Food, drinks, wonderful speakers (!) and after dark escorts to the parking lot! What a wonderful way to watch science in action with like minded people. I am anxious to attend more Atlanta Scienc Tavern Meet Ups!

This was "out of this world", and very inspiring in many ways! Thanks to everyone who made this event so great. It was nice to meet a lot of new people who had not been to Sci Tav events before too! Hope to see you again at future events.

Beautifully organized, wonderfully interesting, and fantastic fun! I felt like I was part of history in the making. Nothing like it since watching Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon, which I watched from the steps of my uncle's house on his big color tv in Salt Lake City with a group of fascinated neighbors. How fitting that it was his birthday yesterday!

As promised last night, here are the links to advocate for planetary science, or NASA in general, by contacting your government representatives:

Contact your government representatives to tell them to support planetary science:www.planetary.org/get-involved/be-a-space-advocate/

Contact your government representatives to tell them to increase NASA’s funding to a historically viable level of one penny per dollar of US spending:penny4nasa.org/

Sign a petition to the Obama Administration asking them to increase NASA’s funding to a historically viable level of one penny per dollar of US spending:www.change.org/petitions/double-nasa-s-budget-to-1-of-the-us-budget

A former member

It was absolutely fabulous: the very professional and interesting presentations; the people who were attending and with whom I got a chance to chat during the breaks; the wonderful snacks that made it all even better; and, of course, the fact that the entire landing went completely as planned -- and, yes, I do understand the latter was not dependent on our meeting up as we did :-)Thanks, Marc, and all those who helped organize this event and volunteered to make it such an unforgettable eperience :-)

I am driving down from Chattanooga with a friend, will this waiting list thing count? Will I be waiting outside, or is that just the number originally expected? I don't really want to drive down to Atlanta and find out there isn't room.

I wish I could assure you that there will be seats waiting for you if you and your friend drive down from Chattanooga, but I can't. It's hard to know with any certainty even how many people who say "I'm Going" will show up at this event. (No-show rates typically range anywhere from 30-50%.) Also, not everyone will come at the sames time. In addition, there will be probably be a number of walk-ins.

This is just the nature of RSVPs on Meetup and other social networking sites. I'm sorry, but there's not much I can do about it.

We're about:

If you are excited by science - but not necessarily a science professional - and you live in the Atlanta area, then the Atlanta Science Tavern is the meetup for you.

Our program is centered on a monthly meeting at Manuel's Tavern, which features a speaker - typically a scientist from a nearby university or research center - who presents his or her work to a smart general audience of science enthusiasts. Thanks to our sponsor,Abrupt Media, these talks are available to a wider audience aspodcastson iTunes.

We also host once-a-month presentations as part of our ongoing Young Researchers Series, which features talks by graduate students and postdocs from local universities.In addition, we organize social outings and field trips that provide opportunities for our members to experience science as it expresses itself in the community at large.